Well, it all started out great when I talked to Dan on Friday afternoon and he told me that everything on the other side of the mountain was 80 degrees and sunny. As I approached the race on Saturday morning, I could see that the weather he told me wouldn't be in this area anytime soon. As We (Rowdy, Doug and Ken) drove up the front side of the mountain it got as dark as could be and started raining. Great day for a race.
When we lined up it wasn't raining hardly at all, but everything was saturated. We started in row one. First of the line. 10 seconds and were off. I hit my start button and everyone else leaves the line but me. Great! It fires up and I am a couple of seconds behind. Turns 1,2,3,4, Jordan and Kevin decide to spin out while holding hands and I go around them. 3 Can- Am's Dan, myself head into the woods. The woods are tight in the beginning and then all of the sudden Dan comes to a sudden stop, I hit him in the rear, Kevin hits me and Jordan hits him. Kymco pile up in the woods. What a great start we are having. Kevin pulled around me and took off and I trailed behind him. We caught the first Can Am in a mile or so and were both pushing him through the woods. There was a sharp left hand turn and all of the sudden this guy just goes straight over the edge of the hill and crashes. I guess all of the pressure from Kevin and I scared him to death. We were running well until the first huge muddy uphill. Kevin started spinning and I went along side of him to keep from hitting him and started to slow down myself. I hit my 4WD button and started to throw some mud and climb up the hill. Kevin was stuck, his axles had been removed a couple of races earlier, so no 4Wd for him. I just started pushing as hard as I could but the elements were holding me back. There was just so much mud on the track that you couldn't control the quad in the turns and the fields were so sloppy that it was hard to find a line that you could open the quad up in. The track got really beat up quickly. With all of the mud on me and the quad, my suspension wasn't working as good as it should have been. I could feel it bottoming out alot and my back was starting to get sore from the constant beating. I stopped sometime during the second lap and turned down my steering stabilizer one notch to make it easier to steer. This helped a little. The creek section was loaded with spectators as usual. I hit the creek as hard as possible and the engine never fluttered a bit (unlike Ga. where it sucked water in and seized the rings on the piston. I made a cover between my airbox and gas tank that worked perfectly) I powered through the water and was on my way. The course just kept getting rougher and I could feel the mud piling up on my helmet making iit very heavy in the front. I stopped for goggles and ice cream on Lap 2, but they wouldn't give me the ice cream. Not knowing where anyone else was on the team, and not knowing what place I was in for sure because of the new scoring system that doesn't work quick enough, I pushed onward. I was tiring at the end of lap 3. On lap 4 I encountered a huge bottleneck in the woods. There were at least 75 quads sitting in a line waitnt to go. The bottleneck was a giant ravine that you had to go down into that was an off camber also. Four quads had flipped over going down the hill and were piled up so noone could get through. Using my 4WD button once more, I was able to climb up and over a tree that had fallen over. It was about 2 feet round. I dropped onto the trail around all the quads that were sitting in line and went down the hill. They were uprighting their quads and two of them started to go. I was following one of the guys on a Honda up the giant hill when he filipped over backwards and started rolling towards me. I quickly turned off the trail just in time to see them flip by me. I made it up the hill with a sigh of relief. About 5 miles to go to the finish line and I was home free. I pushed my trusty Kymco as hard as I could and finished 3rd in the class and 55th overall for the day. What a race! Ken
